ephemeral
by racketeering
Summary: ...happiness is such a fickle thing. au. meliodas/elizabeth.


**o my god this is literally garbage im choking**

 **this is also kind of based off of something that happened to a close friend of mine, and it's a little dramatic and weird, but hey, i'm just gettin this crap out of my system.**

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"She's…" King trails off, mouth suddenly dry as he looked into the eyes of someone he once respected. "...Getting married."

He watches those same eyes shrink back in fear – anger, maybe – and then back to the same dull shade they'd been before.

"Good for her." Meliodas echoes.

King looks back at the shell-like man and sighs, sealing his lips shut to refrain from asking him _why he was holding back_ – he is obviously brimming with something – hell, _anything_ was better than this stunned apathy.

"She deserves to be happy," King chooses his words carefully, wanting to bring comfort, but also avoiding stepping over any and all boundaries.

"She does." He agrees stoically. The sound of a hair splitting would've deafened the room.

"You'll be ok," he says comfortingly, but he knows that no words he could say would heal the agony of watching someone you loved fall for another.

 _He'd be ok_ …

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"I don't understand," Ban slurs, a few beers past tipsy as his hands grab anything steady around him to maintain balance. "I always thought you and Captain-"

He is cut off sharply by a harsh slap to his back from his timid girlfriend.

"That's quite enough to drink for you, dear!" She proclaims shrilly. Elaine may be small, but she has enough common sense to know that harassing the bride with thorns of the past was a great way to not get invited to the reception.

Elizabeth's smile wavers, before strengthening again tenfold – she is no fool, faking smiles comes as easy to her as the rising of the sun.

"I'm so happy you came," she says plastically, a doll of who she was before.

She should be happy – she should be brimming with elation and electrocuted with excitement – she was getting _married_ for heaven's sake!

Then _why_?

Her hands shake slightly as she watches Elaine cart Ban away shamefully, batting his hands back to his sides when they wandered too far from the slope of her waist south.

She should be happy she should be _happy-_

"Ready to go?" He asks her calmly, holding his hand out to her like a proper gentleman would. She takes it gracefully and smiles, at this point, everything else she did was fake, so why stop now?

"Of course," she responds monotonously, diamond studded wonder adorned on her ring finger like a firework in the night sky.

He is perfect for her – kind, smart, slow to anger and quick with his compliments. He is ideal, and she loves him.

She loves him, she _loved him –_ she really, really did – but _why_ isn't she happy?

"I love you, Elizabeth." He tells her softly as they walk out of the chapel, hand and hand, like any pair of dolls would after the most joy-filled day of their silicon existence.

"I love you too," she answers, because just one little lie couldn't hurt.

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And it's _simple,_ right? It's easy for her to smile, it's easy for her to laugh at his jokes. It's easier than she ever could have imagined to live out the lie she never dreamed she'd be intertwined in.

But even that simplicity is as ephemeral as the summer sun, fading with the fall of the leaves and disappearing like the flame of a candle after a sharp gust of wind. Seasons change, Elizabeth dear, and with it, so do the tides of your heart.

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"I just need," she gasped, his lips graze her neck and she _hates_ that she's become revolted by his touch – he sets her on fire, like dull acid nibbling away at her skin painfully, when did it lead to this? When had her pretty lie turned ugly? "-some _sleep_."

Excuse after excuse, her life has recently revolved around them and how she would devise them and it _sickens her_ – why is she so _unhappy?_

Her heart begs her to leave, to run away, back to the last time she was truly happy.

But running never did get her far before the past catches up – she knows that now, it's stitched into the fabric of her heart.

"Alright." He says dryly, he's getting suspicious now, she's avoided this for as long as she possibly could, stalling won't work – she'd trapped in denial.

"Goodnight." She tells him, praying to ever god that he won't say anything back, _please don't make me tell the same lie I tell him every night-_

"Goodnight. I love you." He speaks, and her heart crashes to the ground like a comet to the earth.

"I…love you too."

The lights flicker off, but her eyes stay open for the longest time.

 _I don't deserve happiness,_ are her last thoughts before her mind takes her back to the last time she was truly at peace, back to those dark green eyes and summer nights underneath the stars.

How immoral was she, dreaming of another man while in the arms of her own.

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"I have to see you," she gasps into her phone one day in the bathroom of the shopping mall. Her voice is erratic and static – she has been crying nearly as hard as she did when he first left her. " _Please,_ I need something…"

When she hangs up the phone, she is instilled with so much regret that the sobs begin to get forceful – so much that a woman knocks on the stall door and asks her if she needs an ambulance.

"I-I'm ok," she rushes, embarrassed that she has turned into a woman that has to hide in a public restroom to let out her true emotions.

This certainly isn't what happiness is. Happiness isn't breaking down in a bathroom miles from home just to get away – happiness isn't _regretting_ your own marriage – happiness isn't the crippling _fear_ of becoming pregnant and having to raise a child in a loveless family - happiness isn't words from a man you once loved telling you that if you leave him you'll never be happy again.

She hasn't bee happy for a long, _long_ time. She's trapped in a downward spiral, and she's as destructive as a tsunami – sweeping everything away in her path – and she plans to leave no survivors.

Her blistering eyes linger at the name on the screen of her phone – she's left a message that will determine her fate.

"Don't leave me again, Meliodas" She whispers, before she lets herself crumble into a thousand pieces.

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" _What's wrong?!_ " He demands – no hello, no _'it's been a while'_ – he always was curt enough to get to the point.

"You called back," she marvels carefully, she's amazed to hear his voice again, even after all this time.

" _He didn't hurt you, did he?"_ He asks ferociously – she can sense his curiosity from the other line, and she can feel the sting of tears in her eyes for the thousandth time.

"He-" her voice dropped sharply, "he's not…it's _me_. I'm trapped." She says it so quietly, all other thoughts can be heard over it. He is silent for almost a minute – she wonders if he'll hang up, if he'll cut her out of his life just like he did before.

"Meliodas," she says – no – _begs_ him, "- _please_ …"

His voice is definite like a thunder clap. "I'll be there in ten minutes."

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She is bundled up in her warmest button down coat when he sees her by the bay, hands plunged into warm, red-knitted mittens and her breath comes out in winded spirals that mesmerize. She catches his eye and almost gasps.

"You…" she starts, and he half-expects her to balk in fear – she deserves it, after all he'd pulled her through. Instead, she grants him something foreign to him – _hope_.

"You actually came for me."

"Always," he answers almost immediately. "Elizabeth…I'll always come for you-"

"Except when I really needed you.' She cuts him off, tone suddenly venomous. Of course – he'd forgotten the teeny-tiny detail of the time he didn't come to her rescue. Who was he kidding – he was no hero. He was just the wrathful dragon who longed for a princess that would never be his.

He is close enough to grab her arms, which are huddled close to her face and shaking, he just wants to steady her, to keep her upright.

There are frozen tear tracks on the apples of her cheeks, staining the beautiful face he had loved this entire time – and tarnishing the girl inside. He wants to hold her while she falls apart, he wants to keep her close and piece her back together again, brick by brick – he wants it to be _his_ hands that build her back up, instead of the destructive tools he had used them for so long ago.

"All those years," she whispered quietly. He can feel her cold breath on his cheek and he shivers from the closeness, she smells of home and hearth. "All those years you spent away from me – I waited, I waited and _waited_ for you, Melioda-"

He cuts her off with a kiss, because he's heard it, _lived it –_ over&over again in his dreams like a swinging pendulum – he _knows_ the story, all too well. It's his story – the story of how he broke her heart.

She melts into him like she was born to be there, in his arms by the sunset on the shore, sand frozen underfoot and lake iced over cleanly.

Her lips are soft and warm ad he treasures them like a dragon's keep. He is selfish, he wants to keep them for himself and never let her go.

She pulls away from him somberly, like she knew the outcome of his kiss long before.

"Why did you leave me that day?" She asks him, voice smothered in contradicting emotions, pain, fear, sorrow, _love,_ and he wants to answer her truthfully, he owes her closure.

"I wanted you to be happy," he tells her, bittersweet sickness sapping into his words. "All I brought you was pain, and I knew I had to protect you, from me. I'm so…" He trails off as she starts to cry, uncontrollably. Her small frame shakes in his arms and her pale, gloved hands grasp his shoulders with a vice-like grip.

"I _loved_ you!" She accused him, nails digging before she began to punch him lightly, over and over again. "You… _ruined_ me…"

He holds her so tight he can hear her lungs rattle as she sobs angrily onto his shoulder.

He's made a mistake. He's made many, in fact, but letting her go had to be the worst offense of them all.

He had been so blinded by his need to protect her from himself, he didn't see the damage he'd caused by doing so.

This is what regret was – and they were even farther from the prospect of happiness then they had been from the start.

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-and so, with broken hands and fractured hearts they put each other back together again.

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 **i do not advocate cheating - but to me, it's an interesting, heart-wrenching subject that i'd like to delve into sometime. idk. i like to torture melizabeth i guess.**


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